Marching, cleaning and planting: Canadians mark Earth Day: video

In Montreal they gathered by the tens of thousands for a peaceful march to mark the event. In Windsor, Ont., they planted trees and cleaned a cherished park while in Vancouver they held a parade with the intent to send a clear signal. From coast to coast Canadians came together to mark Earth Day in a variety of ways, in events that sometimes sought to send clear messages to politicians.

A crowd of some 250,000 people inched its way through downtown Montreal and onto Mount Royal Sunday afternoon in what was Quebec’s largest-ever Earth Day march.

Capping a week of raucous student demonstrations, Sunday’s event was a peaceful, family-oriented rally that drew activists from around the province, who had come with a variety of complaints about the federal and provincial governments’ handling of environmental issues.

They waved Quebec flags, carried banners that read “La terre n’est pas a vendre” (the Earth is not for sale) and “Harper dictateur” and blasted Quebec Premier Jean Charest for his Plan Nord strategy for oil and gas exploration in the North. Plenty of Montreal families joined the rally as well; parents with little children in strollers who stopped to eat picnic lunches, and senior citizens who came by the busload. Many said they had never before attended an Earth Day event.

Montreal police don’t provide official crowd estimates, but individual officers said they thought numbers had topped 200,000. Earth Day organizers themselves were stunned, pinning the number of participants at 250,000 or 300,000, given that for a solid 2-1/2 hours marchers inched their way toward Jeanne Mance Park, where they formed a massive “human tree” to be photographed from above. For hours, downtown streets remained closed to traffic and there were lineups to get into the subway.

“The student protests seem to have sparked a larger feeling of malaise, of protest, among Quebecers,” said Claudine Allaire, a senior citizen from the Laurentians, who drove into Montreal with her partner for her first Earth Day protest. “I am not any kind of activist, but I am fed up with the government, about how it is handling the environment and how often I hear about corruption when I turn on the news.”

“Canada has one of the most beautiful and diverse environments in which to live, but it is being endangered by the Harper Conservatives’ reckless cuts to climate science, environmental protection, monitoring and industry oversight,” it said. “At home, the Harper Conservatives have gutted regulations, abdicated their responsibility for the environmental impact assessment of natural resource projects and given undo powers to ministers, who will now be able to overrule the National Energy Board. On the international stage, this government’s decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol has resulted in Canada losing its place as a world leader on environmental matters.”

The Montreal crowd was a mixed group of environmental activists denouncing the Quebec government’s Plan Nord northern exploration plans and shale gas exploration, as well as the federal government’s axing of the Katimavik youth environmental program and Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. Activists from across the province rented buses to join the Montreal Earth Day march.

“We are a quarter-million strong and we have big ideas,” said co-founder of Equiterre Steven Guilbault, addressing the crowd on a giant screen set up at Jeanne Mance Park. “We want to be heard.”

In Vancouver opposition to the expansion of oil giant Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline reached a fever pitch Sunday as thousands of people jammed Commercial Drive to rally for Earth Day.

The public gathering was the first of its kind since the April 12 announcement that the Texas-based company will seek to more than double the amount of crude oil that flows from Alberta to Burnaby, B.C., to 850,000 barrels a day from the present 300,000.

For many people at the Commercial Drive rally, which culminated in a daylong festival at Grandview Park, the heightened risk of an oil spill and an increase in human-caused climate change is their chief opposition to the Kinder Morgan proposal.

“This is absolutely the wrong decision for B.C. I don’t want us to become part of the climate problem,” said Robyn Monk of Vancouver, who grew up on the B.C. coast. “This is my home, I don’t want to see it destroyed.”

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has said he is firmly against the proposed expansion. On Sunday, he told the crowd Vancouver’s mandate to become the world’s greenest city does not fit with a “massive expansion” of oil exports in Vancouver.

The rally was organized by Youth for Climate Justice Now, made up of students from the Vancouver region. One of the volunteers, Windermere Secondary Grade 11 student Andrea Novakovic, said she hopes such events will inform and inspire young people.

“A lot of students don’t know what’s going on. We need more events like this that make them feel like they have a voice,” she said. “It’s important for us to take action now so we don’t regret it later.”

At Windsor’s Black Oak Heritage Park, a team of volunteers spent the weekend cleaning four Dumpsters worth of garbage carelessly strewn through the park.

"You could furnish a full house with the stuff we found," said Peter Berry, harbour master of the Windsor Port Authority. "It’s horrific."

In partnership with The Detroit River Canadian Cleanup, the City of Windsor, the Essex Region Conservation Authority and the Windsor-Essex County Environment Committee, Berry and close to 50 volunteers cleaned a section of Black Oak Heritage Park and a drain that leads to the Detroit River.

Almost 200 tires, a kitchen sink, a vacuum cleaner and even a boat were pulled from the path.

Caroline Biribauer, with ERCA, had a simple message for the people she spent four hours cleaning up after.

"Stop and have a conscience," she said after a gruelling morning. "Think twice about dumping."

Biribauer had no time to rest Sunday as she was busy orchestrating 500 pairs of hands planting trees.

Percy Hatfield, chair of ERCA, said around 500 people braved the blustery weather to line McHugh Park with pin oak and white cedar trees.

In Edmonton, self-described Gypsy and citizen of planet Earth, Natalia Wilhelm laid on a blanket in Fort Edmonton Park, carefully painting the cosmos on her belly.

“I celebrate Earth Day ever day, so this is nothing unusual for me,” Wilhelm said, a hand-painted sign bearing the words “I Love You” at her feet. “It’s a beautiful, sunny day with children playing, and happy people all around.

“How could I not like this?”

With the temperature climbing near 20 C and a slight summery breeze, hundreds of revellers turned out for Edmonton’s annual tribute to Mother Earth, donning hula hoops, juggling, doing Tai Chai, waiting in long lines for bowls of wild mushroom soup.

A free spirit who was born in Ontario, Wilhelm has spent the last few days trying to cheer up strangers outside the Alberta legislature, at the Muttart Observatory, and at Fort Edmonton.

“I am on a spread-the-love adventure,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Moncton, N.B., Mi’kmaq elder and spiritual adviser George Paul performed a Mi’kmaq sweetgrass ceremony and blessing for the Earth and members of other faiths did their own blessing.

Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province and Postmedia News with files from the Edmonton Journal and the Moncton Times & Transcript

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